


if you could call it that

by luciferinasundaysuit



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:42:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22675351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferinasundaysuit/pseuds/luciferinasundaysuit
Summary: After a week at a Motel 6 in Muscle Shoals, Steve's had just about enough of the humidity that seeps into his fucking bones and the rattling noise the broken air conditioner makes.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Kudos: 7





	if you could call it that

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Alabama Pines" by Jason Isbell. Thanks to Brooke and Lyssie for looking this over.

Steve hasn’t been home in five years. He stayed ten years longer than he ever intended, then packed everything into his car and left right after his twenty-eighth birthday.

He calls the kids, writes them. Sends them presents. He mails his parents cards on the appropriate holidays, returns her calls when his mother remembers she has a son. 

His plan was to settle in Chicago. He got a job teaching swim lessons at the Y, found an apartment near the lake, tried dating a sweet girl named Stacy. It didn’t take.

He bounced around, job to job, state to state. Big cities, small towns. Nice apartments, shitty motels. He's lived on both coasts. All three if you count New Orleans. 

Day after day, he acts on impulse. Takes every job that sounds halfway interesting, picks a new city on a whim. Goes home with almost everyone who asks. He never spends the night.

It’s possible that he isn’t led by impulse quite as much as he lets on. If he’s feeling homesick, small towns. If he’s angry at himself, shitty motels. If he’s feeling weak, strong men with blond hair and razor sharp smiles. That’s nobody else’s business, though. Maybe it’s not even his own.

After a week at a Motel 6 in Muscle Shoals, he’s had just about enough of the humidity that seeps into his fucking bones and the rattling noise the broken air conditioner makes. 

The past few nights, he’s taken to leaning against the door frame of his motel room and smoking, looking out at the parking lot. 

He people watches, what few people there are. He’s been standing there a little over an hour. He’s seen a couple drunk guys fighting, some families, a group of girls singing at the top of their lungs. 

There’s nobody out there now. He flicks his cigarette across the pavement, watches the cherry fly through the air. 

It’s so fucking hot. He goes back inside to grab a beer, but he can’t stay in there. He’s gonna melt.

When he returns to his spot on the sidewalk, he sees a guy throwing garbage into the dumpster. The guy’s lean, tan, muscles working in his arms. Steve bites his lip.

The moon is high in the sky, so the man’s face is illuminated when he turns back toward the motel. Steve blinks. 

“Billy?” he whispers. 

That’s not. It can’t be. Billy Hargrove is dead. Steve watched him be buried. Steve’s been to his grave. A lot. It doesn’t matter what this man’s face looks like in the moonlight. 

Billy Hargrove is fucking dead, Steve tells himself.

Then the man walks closer, his gaze fixed on a room somewhere to Steve’s left.

Steve’s heart drops into his stomach. He sees the scars under the man’s tank top, the tattoo on his bicep. 

“Billy?” he says again, louder.

The man’s head turns sharply toward Steve, scowl turning into a lazy grin once he sees Steve’s face.

“Harrington?” Definitely-Billy says after a few seconds. “Am I dreaming or is that you?”

“You.” Steve stops, blinks. “You’re _dead_, Billy.”

Billy smirks. “Am I?”

Steve feels like _he_ might die. Billy’s here. In this Motel 6 parking lot. Alive. Not dead. Breathing. Beautiful.

“Are you?” Steve asks.

Billy shrugs. “Come find out.”

With that, he turns and walks toward his room. He doesn’t look back to see if Steve’s following him. Steve does.


End file.
